In China, Personality Could Come Down to Rice Versus Wheat

MoreIn the South China Sea, China Is Already Acting Like a SuperpowerOf Course China Has a Plan for North Korea CollapseNot Again: Knife Attack at Train Station in Southern ChinaIn the mind of many Americans, China is a monolith of 1.3 billion people, all equally similar to each other and all equally different from the U.S. But Thomas Talhelm knows better. Talhelm first went to China in 2007, working as a high-school English teacher in the booming southern metropolis of Guangzhou. Observant from the start—he’s now a PhD candidate in psychology at the University of Virginia—Talhelm noticed that his students tended to be very conflict averse. But when Talhelm moved after a year to Beijing in China’s north, he noticed a difference. “On one of my first visits to a museum, a curator pointed to my roommate and told him, ‘Your Chinese is good,’” says Talhelm. “But then she pointed to me and said, ‘But your Chinese is much better.’” People in Beijing were much blunter, Talhelm noticed. MoreHow to Make People Like You: 6 Science-Based Conversation HacksHere Are the 7 Things That Can Make You Wildly SuccessfulMcCain Says VA Scandal 'Unacceptable,' Expects It to 'Get a Lot Bigger' NBC NewsMen Charged With Toppling Ancient Rock Formation Avoid Jail Time Huffington PostComet Outlives Predictions Weather.comHe found differences in dialect as well, and the dividing line was the Yangtze River, which divides China’s north a...
Source: TIME: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized China Chinese Culture east Farming independence interdependence personality psychology rice Science West wheat Source Type: news